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Comment by thedevil | Hacker News Reader

Is anyone else amazed at the absolutely magical era of time in which we live?

I don't know which is more awesome: 1) I can find a product that fits my need more exactly than I could ever have expected ten years ago, 2) that I can get information, recommendations and reviews in order to buy these things with confidence, or 3) that something even more awesome will come out a couple years later.

It gets even better because I can take part in all this: I can make an app that fills a specific need (literally, I made an app to calm a crying baby) and without advertising at all, I can ship it to tens of thousands of people around the world just by reviews and word of mouth.

I get so excited just thinking about this stuff and how much greater the future will get, and at an accelerating pace!

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Since no one else had chimed in, I will report that yes I too am flabbergasted befuddled stupefied and completely amazed at the magical time we live in, which as you said gets better on a seemingly weekly basis at this point.

And VR hasn't even gone mainstream yet. What a wild ride we're on indeed

When the only thing you can conceive of is how another product can fulfill a "need", than I guess yes, what an amazing future. But if you consider the fact that a large majority of americans are living lives that are fundamentally as bad as they were 40 years ago, then no, its a pathetic future.

Discrimination of all kinds - racism, sexism, homophobia - are still extremely prevalent. People are killed because of the color of their skin. These are not just problems in "third world" countries, but problems in the biggest cities in America. These are just problems of "intraracial crime", but perpetrated by government officials who are supposed to protect the very innocents they are killing.

So no, I dont think this is an amazing time. But maybe the next consumer product can solve some of those problems.

Violence is trending downward, in the US and worldwide.

Racism, sexism and homophobia are also trending downward, at least in the US (we just barely legalized same-sex marriage, a significant step forward).

Concerns about these things have spiked the last few years, but that doesn't mean that these problems have spiked.

And having products that solve my problems isn't just materialism, it does matter - It matters that I have products that save me time and let me focus on more important things. It matters that I have better products. It matters that my child is safer than 40 years ago from better playgrounds. It matters that my son's mom has an app that can send me her location with a tap of a button when she's having a seizure. It matters that I can take cheap online courses to improve my career. It even matters that I have more music in my car, because that makes me happier.

Edit: Adding this because it's awesome: http://www.gapminder.org/world/#$majorMode=chart$is;shi=t;ly...

>It matters that my child is safer than 40 years ago from better playgrounds.

thats so great. we made the playground equipment safer so your kids can play on it, meanwhile, a black child is gunned down by police on that playground.

All of your points of reference only seem to reveal that you have no perspective into the actual big problems that still plague all our societies, problems that consumer problems dont even attempt to solve and probably cant solve. But im glad you have more music in your car.

Life in most places has improved dramatically - literacy, healthcare and life expectancy, human rights, access to food... Nearly nobody is living lives that are "fundamentally as bad as they were 40 years ago".

There are literally millions of people worldwide, who are healthy, or married, or well nourished, or spending more time with their families, for whom it could not have been possible 40 years ago. I don't think that warrants a flippant, self-righteous attitude.

There are more people living in slavery today than ever before in human history.

These things are not binary.

yes consuming things certainly is wonderful, imagine how excited all the people who make them must be

They are probably pretty excited to get paid far more than they could by farming. In China incomes have gone from 2000 yuan a year farming, to 2000 yuan a month or more working in factories. Ricardo's theory of comparative advantage works great in theory and practice, if you are open minded enough to look at all the evidence.

Paul Krugman has a great article on this BTW: http://web.mit.edu/krugman/www/ricardo.htm

More products that I don't really need, more time and money wasted to buy those products, more pollution... Not sure we're ultimately more happy with this.

Is it? The razor I bought can't cut hair, the laptop I got has a stupidly nosiy fan, the phone I bought has a rapidly diminishing battery life, the headset I bought makes a constant hiss, my OS and TV now spy on me. Do I even own my steam games? I have to rent my music and TV to get it at a reasonable price, but songs and shows disappear without explanation or warning.

It seems to me things are worse than they used to be, it's harder than ever to find quality products, even meticulously researching everything.

And that's before we even get onto forced obselence.

Maybe I'm becoming a grump as I grow older but electronics brands you used to be able to trust are no longer sure bets and everything seems to have a nasty gotcha spyware or horrid EULA.

Edit: although I do admit there's a lot of magical things, I love my Kindle, I love how my phone synchs with my Kindle when I'm in random queue, I love being able to get + give directions from my phone in random places.

I just feel overall quality of goods has gone down as they become (worringly for the environment) disposible and consumers are losing control as their stuff is no longer theirs.

"Electronics brands you used to be able to trust" only had that trust from historical establishment. I would argue that there are still brands that are trustworthy. They're just different brands. In 20 years we'll be talking about the same thing from a different reference point.

For all of your other complaints (which I do agree with, for what it's worth), there has been a trade-off. Razors are smaller and in cartridge form because the market decided it was more important to shave quickly and conveniently than to be able to have the closest shave possible on your neck and your head. The phone you have has rapidly diminishing battery life because it has a display that rivals your computer's monitor in fidelity.

I could go on, but I'm sure you know this already. I've been having my own "grumpy old man" moments lately, so this post hit a little close to home. I've been trying to keep in mind that behind those complaints, there's probably a value proposition somewhere. Find it and exploit it. It can only make the world better.

And that "nasty gotcha spyware?" The horrid EULA? If you're as old as you sound, you know that's been the case for a long, long time. It's as easy to avoid now as it was then. You don't have to go full Stallman. Just be a savvy consumer.

The trust thing has largely been sacrificed to placate the shareholders chasing that 3% annual growth.

This even though said growth only really showed up during the industrial revolution and after WW2.

The first because it was the first ever industrialization, and the second because much of Europe's industrial capacity had been blasted to bits.

In essence, shareholders (and their useful idiots, the economists) expect infinite compound growth while living in a finite environment.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheat_and_chessboard_problem

Maybe a case of increasing expectation. Owning your own movie or game was never all that cool - what with losing them, or scratching the CD, or the platform changing so they didn't run any more. Steam beats all that, at a cost of course.

The chaotic state of shows and songs is another story. My outlet (e.g. Netflix) has shifting contracts and terms that are opaque to me. So I miss out by procrastinating. Still its better than broadcast TV ever was! That was somebody else deciding every night what I would watch.

I'm an old grump too. But really, I should just have more patience when my phone won't connect. Its going to space after all!

>Owning your own movie or game was never all that cool - what with losing them, or scratching the CD, or the platform changing so they didn't run any more. Steam beats all that, at a cost of course.

So we replaced a flawed physical medium with a digital medium which, theoretically, should solve all those problems. But dark patterns, bad licensing terms, and loads of other problems (that are often the results of purposeful decisions) make that digital medium just as flawed.

Differently flawed. And actually very useful as it is - I log many more hours now playing (instead of thrashing over problems) because it almost always works. Wherever I am; whatever machine I'm on. There's no denying the benefits.

Yeah, and unfortunately, Netflix is more and more changing not just their contract/terms. Their main interface is breathtakingly annoying to use these days. I'd say that it's along the same spectrum of annoyance that the parent post is talking about. My expectations were increasing because the quality was increasing at the same rate. Now my expectations for them, despite all they've done, has fallen flat and dull. The most redeeming thing out of them these days for me is reading their tech blog, which isn't shoved down my throat unlike their own media content. :)

At the risk of sounding like a hipster, I got rid of my TV and phone, along with a bunch of other personal affects and my happiness has gone through the roof. No need to have my expectations fail on when it's not even relevant. Obviously this can't happen for everyone, but it's something I recommend.

There are entire cottage industries online of excellent inexpensive razors, laptops with less noisy fans, and good headphones. You have a choice whether to buy the Walmart version of a product or the good version, and both are cheaper relatively compared to 20 years ago.

That said, healthcare, education and real estate and much more expensive now, which are three of the things that matter most...

The laptop has that fan because it needs to move all that hot air the CPU, GPU and whatevever-else-U that is doing who knows what inside the chassis.

Similarly with the phone. The old phone did one thing, make and receive calls. Your new phone is in contact with a number of servers constantly, monitors location, gravity (screen rotation), proximity (so your ear do not hang up on people), and a bunch of other stuff.

Also, while improving hardware is about using fewer atoms to do the same job, battery is age old chemistry. End result is that it takes longer to make better batteries. Never mind that more energetic batteries can be lethal if they are anything less than rugged.

But yeah, creeping featuritis is a persistent problem.

You can still buy music. I recently bought a bunch of CDs for like $10 each. I've stored them in Amazon Cloud Drive for now. If that disappears without warning and my hard drive fails at the same time, I can rip them again.

Compounded with things like 3d printing...e.g. Our shed came with 6 plastic hangers and 36-ish slots for them. A few minutes with a CAD package and I'm printing out a bunch more at a unit cost of $.18 a piece...if I upload the model, another person can also print as many as they want for next to nothing.

I believe we live in an extraordinary period in history. By that I mean a unique period that didn't happen before and that won't likely happen again after it has ended. We're able to make so much stuff because we're burning energy at an unsustainable rate to do so, in the form of fossil fuels, much faster than we could manage realistically with renewables alone. This will come to an end eventually, either by collective suicide via destruction of our own ecosystem, or voluntarily once we realize that we need to seriously lower our greenhouse gas emissions to survive.

Just keep in mind that lot of those reviews are in fact fake. With all the native advertising, fake testimonials and reviews I'd be somewhat reserved to believe anything online.

which product do i consume to get happiness?

Recreational Marijuana, they only actual great new product from the past few years

Yes, I am too amazed by the consumerist culture that manufactures sense of need that we imagine we are fullfulling the higher levels of maslowian pyramid but instead are just responding to a conditioning.

If I had a timemachine I would take Mr. Maslow, take him to our time, and say: "You had a fantastic room. But behold! We've succeeded in turning the entire planet into a conditioning chamber with 'the internet' and the Facebook. Dogs? We use humans as our subjects. How many? Well, now we are in the low billions but eventually we will have them all.

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